The Survival of the Bark Canoe~I

The Survival of the Bark Canoe~I The New Yorker, February 24, 1975 P. 49

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REPORTER AT LARGE about bark canoes & Henri Vaillancourt, of Greenville, N.H., who builds them entirely by hand the way the American Indians did. He built his 1st canoe in 1965, when he was 15. Since then he has built 33 birch-bark canoes. Along with snowshoes & paddles he makes in winter, he does nothing else for a living. Three or four Indians in Canada are also professional makers of bark canoes & one old white man in Minnesota. Vaillancourt has appointed himself the keeper of this art. He has visited almost all the other living bark-canoe makers, but he believes he is the most skillful of them all. Tells how he began his work. Much information came from Edwin Tappan Adney, who died the year he was born. Adney collection information on bark canoes & a book ultimately came out called "The Bark Canoes & Skin Boats of North America", by Howard I. Chapelle, who used Adney's notes. U.S. Govt. Printing Office released the book in 1964. V. can build 7 canoes a year. Most are around 16 feet long & for that size he charges $850. Greenville has a population of 1600 with many French Canadians, like V. Most of today's canoes are of aluminum, Fiberglas and plastic, and lack the elegance of the bark ones. V. has said that Indian canoe makers could do everything as well or better than today's makers who use modern tools & materials. Tells about his principal tool-the crooked knife. Long discription of canoe designs & history of the bark canoe. Writer went with V. & 3 others on a canoe trip up north of Moosehead Lake in Maine. Tells about the outing. Thoreau made 2 bark-canoe trips there with Indian guides. His book "The Maine Woods" told about it.